US military battle planners are heading to the Gulf to be in position to carry out an attack on Iraq. World War II was touted as "a war to end all wars". US President George Bush would have very much liked to sell this one as a war to end all weapons of mass destruction (at least for public consumption) but for the spoilsport from North Korea.
Yes, North Korea has done everything which would have unleashed a nuclear holocaust on the long-suffering people of Iraq if their leader was the one who struck a Kim Jong-Il-like defiant note. To the consternation of the "dear leader" of the free world, Kim declared last week that his scientists are working on a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 pact. Worse still, he kicked out UN arms inspectors.
Chancelleries of the world are busy analyzing Kim’s motives. They ask why this bombshell now. The real question should be why not now when the fate of one country hangs on the crucial question of whether it has weapons of mass destruction or not.
We don’t know how the drama which began in Yongbyon, home to North Korea’s main nuclear complex, will play out but the issues raised by North Korean challenge and the UN Resolution 1441 on Iraq are not likely to die down soon.
Even before the Iraqi crisis flared up, there were some justifiable questions about the morality of a few countries led by the US deciding who should and should not have nuclear weapons. And nonnuclear states in Asia and elsewhere note the US is following an entirely different approach to North Korea and Iraq though the alleged crimes are the same. In the case of one, Iraq, the US is prepared to risk a war.
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, we are told again and again by Americans, is a leader who does not care for human lives, Iraqi or other. He has weapons of mass destruction. Should not a cornered Saddam use all these weapons and implement a scorched-earth policy killing people in thousands and setting fire to oil fields and other properties in Iraq?
That the Washington hawks are not scared of any such possibilities proves that even they don’t believe in the propaganda they have unleashed against Iraq. But other countries, especially those who don’t have nuclear weapons, are going to draw an entirely different conclusion from this.
It is quite possible that after having watched the way the US is confronting North Korea and Iraq, more countries may quietly try to acquire or expand secret arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.
All this means that there can be no meaningful curbs on nuclear proliferation so long as the established nuclear powers maintain their superiority, turn a blind eye when their favorites (Israel in the case of US) amass nuclear weapons and behave like frightened chickens when challenged by a country that has them and makes no secret of them.
The oft-repeated argument is that nuclear weapons can be dangerous in the hands of "rogue states". But to date only one country had used nuclear weapons against its enemies; and that country is not even being called a rogue state.
